2018 Summer Software Projects

Hi! My name is Roberts K. and I’m a member of the software development team.

The software developers have a busy summer planned, packed with new and exciting updates to the swerve drive, our use of sensors, and computer vision!

The team has three off-season tracks: new developers are getting acquainted with our workflow and programming languages with mentor Greg; mentor Marisa is working with students to reimplement the 2016 Stronghold robot while learning about software architecture; and lead mentor Jeff is leading research and development on sensors and computer vision.

Roberts and Marisa discuss the robot's software during the 2018 FRC World Championship in Detroit.

Currently, I’m working on modifying the swerve drive code in the Third Coast repository to allow us to reposition the center of rotation anywhere relative to the center of the robot. I’m implementing swerve calculations from Ether’s white papers on Chief Delphi. We’re really looking for versatility in our design so we have a toolbox full of software tools ready for the upcoming season.

The same concept of versatility and toolboxes applies to our sensors and computer vision. Over the summer, we want to experiment with these localization technologies so we know how and when it’s best to use each sensor. Both were important in POWER UP and had the potential to be incredibly useful so we’re planning on expanding our capacity to implement various sensors (LIDAR, ultrasonic, stereo-vision, etc.).

Hopefully, our efforts during the summer pay off next season. The more time and effort we devote to tackling challenges now, the more time we have to focus on strategy, autonomous routines, and the specifics of the game during the build and competition season.